Zoë Nightshade
by Zoe Nightshade
Summary: Zoë Nightshade, the beloved lieutenant of Artemis's hunt has died, but she will never be forgotten. This is her story.
1. Crissy Field

I loaded the half-bloods and Zoë into my chariot quickly. A mortal, Annabeth Chase's father, had saved all of us up on Mount Tam (Mount Othrys). My body ached still from holding the sky for so long, but I wasn't about to complain. Zoë was next to me in the front bench/seat wrapped in a blanket. Tears fell down my face. I knew that she was dying. I attached the reins to the front of the chariot and told the deer to go to Crissy Field.

"Zoë-" I started. She looked up at me. Her face seemed to tell me that she was alright. Of course she wasn't alright, but she wasn't angry. She was peaceful. Ladon, her little dragon, had bitten her and Atlas, her father, had thrown her into the black rocks. She had many broken bones, but I had numbed the pain. I read her mind.

_Who will be the lieutenant? Bianca's dead. I was sure she'd be the next one. I am dying. I knew it from the beginning. What about the war? What will happen?_

"All will be fine." I whispered to her. She seemed to calm down. I picked her up and put her on the soft grass. Annabeth and Percy went to Dr. Chase, who'd been following us in his plane. He was a brave man, I hated to say. Thalia, daughter of Zeus, came straight to me. She helped me bind Zoë's wounds. She was the one. I knew it. I remembered years ago, when she was twelve, she, Luke, and Annabeth had been running to Camp Half-Blood. They had come across us. I remembered the look in Zoë's eyes. She would be the next lieutenant. Zoë had tried to get her to join the hunt, but it had resulted in them being enemies. I guess they had softened on the quest to save me.

I could hardly look at Zoë. She was so brave. I tried to put more and more bandages on her, but she looked at me straight.

"Do not try, my lady. It will do no good." Zoë said.

I picked her up in my arms. Thalia got Annabeth and Percy. Percy. Something a- I had to tend to Zoë. She shivered. I held her close. Grief hung in the air. I cried, for once, unashamed for crying in front of mortals that weren't my hunters. A tear rolled down Annabeth's cheek. I remembered, when she was seven, she had been fond of Zoë. Percy looked sad as well.

"Can't you heal her with magic?" he asked hopefully. "I mean... you're a goddess."

How I wished I could. I shook my head sadly.

"Life is a fragile thing, Percy." I said swallowing a sob. "If the Fates will the string to be cut, there is little I can do."

I set my hand on Zoë's poisoned side to try to cure it even though I knew there was nothing I could do. She gripped my wrist. She looked at me. At that moment, even though I already knew it, it hit me. She was dying. She'd be gone soon. After all those years... This was the end.

"Have I... served thee well?" she asked.

"With great honor." I said crying. "The finest of all my attendants."

She seemed to relax. "Rest. At last."

"I can try to heal the poison, my brave one." I said uselessly.

She looked at Thalia.

"I'm sorry we argued." Zoë said. "We could have been sisters."

"It's my fault." she said. "You were right about Luke, about heroes, men, everything." And then she broke into a small sob.

"Perhaps not all men." Zoë murmured. She looked at Perseus Jackson, the son of Poseidon. I understood what it was about the boy. He was like Hercules, the hero who'd betrayed my lieutenant, but not the betraying part. He was reliable. He was loyal. And he would be reliable and loyal to Olympus.

"Do you still have the sword, Percy?" she asked him. He gave it to her in pen form and carefully put it in her hand. She fixed her eyes in the pen.

"You spoke the truth, Percy Jackson. You are nothing like..." and then she spoke the name that she swore to herself she would say. "Hercules. I am honored that you carry this sword."

She shuddered.

"Zoë?" Percy said.

"Stars," she whispered. "I can see them again, my lady."

I remembered how she'd always loved the stars. They had saved her life. She also liked to look at them to remember the beautiful and kind, even though rebellious, hunter, Callisto.

"Yes, my brave one." I said. "They are beautiful tonight."

"Stars," she whispered. And she didn't move again. Tears flowed down my cheek. I knew what I had to do. I put her into the stars. She was not a hesperid, like she had been born as. She was what her soul was. A hunter. The constellation was a girl with a bow running across the sky. She'd hunt amongst the stars.


	2. Thalia

I felt like crying all the way through the Olympian Winter Solstice Meeting. Especially when I chose Thalia as my new lieutenant. I knew she'd make a great one. Zoë had chosen her. It also would give Olympus a few more years to decide what to do. We had a problem on our hands and his name was Perseus Jackson. I was on his side the whole time. He'd never switch sides.

When I got back to the hunter campsite, I told the hunters what happened to Zoë and why Thalia was there. Many of them cried. The whole time, Thalia looked guilty. I listened to her thoughts.

It's my fault she died. If I'd only thrown my knife at Atlas or helped her occupy Ladon... I don't belong here. Everyone here is at least fifty years old... What now? I'm a camper. I am! I miss Zoë.

"It's not your fault." I told her.

Everyone is crying because Zoë is gone. I'm just someone sitting here, taking her place. She thought.

That night, I showed Thalia her tent. There were seven. One for me, one for the lieutenant, Zo- I mean Thalia, and the rest held two hunters each. I thought about Thalia's life. She'd had a hard one. Zoë had one too. I decided to ask her about it. I didn't know exactly what it felt like to be a half-blood. I knew what it felt to be hated by Hera though. My mother was Leto and my dad was Zeus, and Hera still hasn't forgiven Zeus for cheating on her so many times.

The next day was rather quiet. We didn't hunt like we normally did. It just didn't seem right after... You know.

"Thalia?" I asked her.

"Yes, my lady." she said. So much like Zoë.

"What was it like?"

"What was what like?" she asked.

"I mean...ummm.... Your life." I said.

"Yes," said Phoebe. She still had some bandages on from a trick that Aphrodite had told some boys to play on her. "You weren't supposed to be born. And what was your trip to Camp Half-Blood like? Just tell us parts. Please?"

"It's quite a long story." she said.

"You've got an immortal lifetime." I said. She smiled sadly.

"Well, I'll start from when I ran away." she said. "This is what happened:

My mom was always drunk, so when I was ten years old, I decided that I had had enough and I ran away to that place called Camp Half-Blood. Actually, I never believed in it that much, but everyday with my mom got worse and worse, and every time it got worse, I believed in camp more and more. I kind of think I was going crazy. So, well, I'd been traveling and fighting off monsters for a couple days, and I was looking for a place to sleep and this boy about twelve leaped out of an alley and cornered me with a knife. I was really scared, but soon, we realized that we were both half-bloods."

"The boy, Thalia." I said. "Was that Luke?"

Thalia nodded and then continued. "There isn't much to say about the next almost two years. We just traveled around fighting monsters. We actually started to lose faith. Sometimes, Hermes would help us, but we never saw him. He would just send signs down. I don't think he knew it, but whenever he blessed us, it was like Christmas times a million. It would make us believe in Olympus more."

Thalia looked on like she was lost in memories. Then she went on. Her story was interesting.

"Then, one day, we were fighting a monster and we were both cornered and about to die, but then suddenly, it died."

"How did that happen?" asked one of the younger hunters.

"In front of us, there was a little girl with startlingly grey eyes. She looked about maybe seven or eight. Turns out she was seven." Thalia said.

"Annabeth!" said Mary.

"Yeah. She was a daughter of Athena. She'd run away and Athena had guided her toward us. Me 'n' Luke felt kinda scared at first because Athena was pressuring us to get Annabeth to Camp Half-Blood safely, but it turned out that she was a miracle. She got us all there. Well, most of us at least. I was turned into a tree for six years." Thalia looked down sadly. She'd been a little brighter for a few moments.

"What was it like just waking up?" I asked.

"I said to Grover, he was the satyr, to bring Luke and Annabeth and I'd hold them off. The monsters I mean. He said no, but I'd already made up my mind. I didn't like living like a hunted animal with everyone out to get me. So I stood on a hill and a monster stabbed me. Then, I woke up in the middle of the night with a girl who looked like an older version of Annabeth next to me crying,'Thalia, it's you', and then I went back to sleep, and in the morning, everyone else discovered me. And, that was when I discovered that Luke had gone to the dark side, there was a son of Poseidon alive, and that there was a war coming and I was totally unprepared."

"What about this quest. What was the story for that?" I asked Thalia, suddenly interested with half-blood lives.

"Mrs. Jackson drove us on a long drive to Westover Hall and all that manticore stuff happened, and then you know what happened. Well, we were going west and we met lots of monsters and Bianca died and then Zoë died and-"

"Oh." I said. It was a hard subject for Thalia to talk about.

Everyone was exhausted, so we all went to bed early. As I walked into my tent, I was thinking about my lieutenant. My former one, not Thalia. What was her life like? That was what I was thinking of, and that was what I dreamed of.


End file.
